To look at the long-term consequences of the Plantation, it’s very difficult to do that without also taking into consideration the long-term implications of the 1641 rebellion: because the massacres of 1641, in the winter of 1641, really were very traumatic for the Protestant settler community in Ulster, and they left long-term scars within that community. So whatever sort of compromise that had been reached between the local Irish community and the settlers before 1641, was totally gone by 1649 when the war was coming to an end. And so in the second half of the 17th century, you do have two communities who are mutually hostile and suspicious of one another; so that would be the main long-term implication of the Plantation. But there are religious ones. Obviously, you have got two, no three, you’ve got three religious denominations with Presbyterians, Church of Ireland and Catholic: and as a result of the 1641, of the soldiers coming over in the 1640s, you also have small Quaker and Baptist communities. So you could say that’s a positive thing - you have got more religious diversity; but each of those denominations is very intolerant of the religious beliefs of the other groups, so in fact it creates sectarianism rather than diversity.
|